ST. JOSEPH, Minn. – Hunter Weiss cemented her place as one of the best outside hitters in Division III this season after earning a second straight First Team All-American honor. In her junior season for the College of Saint Benedict volleyball team, she also established herself as one of the top students both nationally and at CSB.
 
Weiss – who won the NCAA's Elite 90 Award for DIII women's volleyball in November – is CSB's Dr. LuAnn Reif Scholar-Athlete of the Year for 2019-20. The department's scholar-athlete award is given to the junior or student-athlete with the top cumulative GPA in the department. The award was renamed to honor Dr. Reif, who announced her retirement after more than 30 years as the department's Faculty Athletic Representative this spring. As FAR, Reif attended both NCAA and MIAC meetings on behalf of the Saint Benedict athletic department, helping to develop key policies and procedures to support the department and its student-athletes. She is the only person to have served in the FAR role in the history of CSB's athletic department.
 
Weiss, a biology major, has a 4.0 GPA after three years at Saint Benedict. As a junior this season, she also earned CoSIDA Academic All-American First Team honors. She is the volleyball team's first Academic All-American since Robyn Ruschmeier 1998, and the first First Team All-American for any CSB sport since basketball's Laura Wendorff earned the honor in 1999-00.
 
As well as earned First Team All-American honors on the court in 2019, Weiss was named the MIAC and AVCA Central Region Player of the Year. She reached the 1,000-kill milestone on Oct. 16, and finished the year 10^th in Division III with a .396 hitting percentage.
 
Weiss wasn't the only one on the volleyball team to maintain a high GPA. The program was one of seven CSB athletic teams to maintain a cumulative team GPA of 3.5 or better in 2019-20. The Bennie cross country team led all 11 of the department's teams with a 3.741 team GPA. Both soccer (3.668) and tennis (3.665) maintained a 3.6 or higher. All 11 of the school's varsity teams maintained a GPA of 3.3 or higher in 2019-20.
 
Of the more than 200 student-athletes on CSB's varsity rosters in 2019-20, 52 earned a spot on the department's Athletics Honor Roll in at least one sport in the Fall 2019 semester. In order to earn a spot on the honor roll, student-athletes must be a sophomore, junior or senior who have maintained a cumulative GPA of 3.75 or higher.
 
Below is a list of the GPAs of each team in order in 2019-20:
   
The Fall 2019 Athletics Honor Roll student-athletes are listed below by sport: